InsaneJournal

Who: Henry and Eddie
What: Henry almost gets sucked on by a vampire, but Eddie steps in
Where: The Last Drop night club
When: Late August
Warnings: Slightly PG-13 at the beginning, but otherwise safe for work
Status: Complete!



The Last Drop wasn’t a terrible bar, all things considered. Eddie didn’t hang out there when he could help it, but that was mostly because when he went out drinking, he didn’t care to be the drink.

But the vibe was alright, really, and Eddie didn’t mind the music, which was gloomier than the music he usually listened to but still nice and heavy. The owner was one of Eddie’s regular customers, and so he came by every couple of weeks to drop off a hefty bag of weed, and to have a couple drinks on the house. He hadn’t dressed up, hadn’t put on some gothic garb, but his ripped jeans and the battle vest that he wore over his Iron Maiden shirt weren’t entirely out of place.

He was sitting at the bar now, staring out over the dance floor, a Midnight Fog smoking in his hand. He didn’t glance over as the pale woman approached him. Her ample cleavage was spilling over the top of her corset, and her eyes were outlined in a smokey kohl.

Her blood-red lips parted to speak, revealing a hint of fang.

“Sorry, I have a boyfriend,” Eddie said shortly, before she could get a sound out. She pouted, but turned away to find someone else to play with.

He thought he recognized the man on the dance floor from the Network, though he didn’t think he’d ever actually talked to him. He tilted his head, watching him, wondering if he knew what kind of bar this was. When Gregor nudged him and handed him the joint, Eddie accepted it without taking his eyes from him.

“Hey, that guy over there,” he said, motioning towards Henry with the joint before passing it back to the barback. “Does he come here often?”

Gregor took a long drag from the joint, peering at him. Then he shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Not when I’m here, at least.”

Henry was in trouble. Not dire trouble – the kind that required a call to Revy or Leon to come bail out his normie ass – but trouble nevertheless. He hadn’t initially known that the raven-haired woman who’d been chatting him up was a vampire until she dragged him out onto the dancefloor. Henry wasn’t much of a dancer, but she was insistent. After a couple of songs Henry realized that the woman (Cassahndra – emphasis on the “ahn”) wasn’t breathing hard after several minutes of dancing. In fact, she wasn’t breathing at all.

It then occurred to him (much too late) that a vampire themed club in Vallo probably catered to actual vampires. Henry could hear Revy at the back of his mind calling him a fucking idiot.
Cassandra was close to him now, her body grinding against him as they danced. Under different circumstances, Henry would have been perfectly fine with that. However, the way her red eyes looked at him, Henry realized that sex wasn’t what she was hungry for.

“Why don’t we find somewhere private,” she said airily.

“No,” Henry laughed nervously, untangling himself from her and backing away. “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea…”

Cassandra wasn’t about to give up her prey. She grasped Henry’s wrist and pulled him back to her, pressing her chest hard against him. Her eyes bored into his and she chuckled softly. She then leaned close, her lips tickling his neck near his ear and sending an excited shiver through his body. Henry’s heart started to race, which seemed to excite her too.

“C’mone,” she whispered into his ear, tracing a long red fingernail along his jawline which sent another tingly wave through his body. “Just for a few minutes.”

Going off with Cassandra was not just a bad idea, it was dangerous, but it was too late now. Whether he liked it or not, Henry was completely under her spell. His head was fuzzy and unfocused, and his body refused to respond to any impulse to move away. He wondered idly if having his blood sucked by a vampire would be any different than having a ghost pull out his energy.

“That’s a good boy,” Cassandra cooed, taking him by the collar of his shirt and pulling him along with her.

Eddie didn’t miss how Henry had tried to move away from the woman, and he frowned. Well, that settled it.

Eddie wasn’t a hero. He knew that. He’d made one attempt at being a hero, and he was pretty sure that it would’ve gotten him killed if he hadn’t ended up in Vallo instead. That didn’t mean that he was wasn’t going to do something.

He downed the rest of his drink in a single gulp, and then stumbled his way over to the pair.

“I thought that was you,” Eddie said, voice loud even when taking into account that he was trying to be heard over the music. His words were carefully enunciated in the way unique to people who’d had too much to drink. “Man, it’s been so long.” He clumsily slung his arm over Henry’s shoulders, apparently oblivious to the fact that by doing so he was pushing the vampire a little further away from him. “Who’s your friend?” And then, he turned to the vampire. “Man, this guy took the best photos at my prom. Really, you should see them. Oh, I might have one here. Gimme a minute.”

He fished in his back pocket for his wallet, losing his balance as he did so and knocking into the woman again.

Cassandra was not pleased when Eddie wandered over to her and inserted himself between her and Henry. She was even less pleased when he stumbled into her. “Get off!” she shoved him away. “Can’t you see we’re in the middle of something?! No one cares about your stupid prom photos!”

She grabbed Henry by his arm and tried to pull him with her again, but her spell was broken. Henry easily twisted out of her grasp and in the same fluid movement, stepped just out of her reach.

By this time people in their general vicinity had stopped dancing to look at them, wondering if a fight was going to break out on the dance floor. Cassandra glanced around and didn’t seem pleased to be the sudden center of attention. She glared at Eddie and Henry as if to warn them that she wouldn’t forget this. Then she turned on her heel and stormed off.

Cassandra gone, the people around them turned their gaze towards Henry. Their curious looks made him feel incredibly stupid. His shoulders hunched up towards his ears and the blood rushed to his cheeks. He would have liked to have had the ability to just melt through the floor and into oblivion, thank you very much.

Since that wasn’t an option, he started backing away. “Sorry…” he mumbled sheepishly before backing right into Eddie.

Eddie flung an arm across his shoulders to guide him back toward the bar. “Hey, no harm done. I thought you looked maybe like you weren’t super into what was going on. I hope I didn’t misread that whole situation and end up cockblocking you.”

“Heh,” Henry shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. She didn’t want to screw me.” Henry said. “She wanted something else entirely and I have enough issues with ghosts wanting to siphon my energy all the time.” He sighed as he took a seat at the bar. “I’m a fucking idiot. Why didn’t I think that a vampire themed bar would cater to real vampires?”

Eddie rose his eyebrows, but ghosts wanting to syphon my energy all the time seemed like a conversation to have at a later time. Probably when he wasn’t still recovering from the shock of nearly having his blood syphoned.

“I’m still trying to adjust to the idea of vampires actually existing, and I come by here every couple weeks to do business,” Eddie said. He turned to Gregor and held up two fingers, and the vampire turned to mix them a couple of drinks. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. You’re Henry, right? I’m Eddie.”

Henry shook his head. “I lived in a place a lot like Vallo a while ago,” he explained. “We had vampires there. And aliens. And magic users. You know, a lot of different people. I should just expect things like this…”

He glanced up when Gregor deposited two glasses on the bar. He glanced at Eddie before picking up the glass. “Thanks,” he said. Then added. “Yeah, I’m Henry and…thank you for saving my butt back there.”

“Hey, don’t mention it,” Eddie said, waving a heavily-ringed hand. “Or maybe you can mention it a little. I am weak to flattery.” He grinned. “My boyfriend is a Big Damn Hero, so sometimes it’s nice to be able to do my part when I can.”

Henry chuckled a little. “Yeah, I understand,” he said. “I’m no hero, nothing even remotely close. But I have this bad habit of helping people and it usually ends up getting me into trouble. Not that’s what that was about.” Henry turned to gesture towards the dance floor as if indicating his ill advised dance with Cassandra the Hungry Vampire. “That was just me being an absolute dumb shit.” He picked up his glass. “I have a bad habit of doing that a lot too.” He took a drink and then switched topics. “Who's your boyfriend?”

“His name’s Steve. Harrington.” He actually did have a wallet-sized photo from the adult prom in his wallet, and he pulled it out to show Henry. “The one with the worse hair,” he said, pointing to the brunette that wasn’t him. Whether or not Steve’s hair really was worse than Eddie’s in the photo was debatable: it looked pretty good.

Henry looked at the photo and couldn’t help smiling despite himself. He recognized the pair in the picture. “You both look very happy,” he said. “I’m glad you had a good time. I think just about everyone who went had a good time. I got so many shots of people smiling and having fun.”

“I think so too,” Eddie said, and grinned. “A couple of my friends who’d been mooning over one another,” he emphasized this by resting his cheek on his open hand and fluttering his eyelashes at Henry, “for months finally managed to fess up to one another that night. I always thought that proms were, you know, kind of dumb? ‘Ohhh, look, another dumb dance party to show everyone who popular and cool we are,’ you know? But it turned out to actually be pretty cool.”

Henry chuckled. His prom was only 6 or so years ago, but it felt as though it had been so much longer than that. “I fell flat on my face when I went to my high school prom,” he said. “Not one of my finer moments. They got it on video though.” Because of course someone had been filming at the time. Henry laughed thinking about it. “God that seems like it was so long ago.”

He took a liberal gulp of his drink. “But, there is something kind of magical about prom.” He went on. “Like how your friends finally got the nerve to confess to each other? I don’t consider myself a romantic or anything like that, but prom is probably the best place to confess someone’s love…or crush or whatever.”

Eddie snorted. “Of course someone was. Cameras everywhere. Even back in the 80s.” Of course, back in the 80s, the prom or the other big school dances probably were the only school functions that would’ve been filmed, outside of the sports whatevers. He knew from the kids that a lot more of the day-to-day life at school got filmed thanks to cellphones. He was glad that had never been a thing back in his day.

“I like creepy abandoned cabins for my love confessions, personally,” Eddie said, grinning. “But yeah, it was pretty cute. And a long time coming. The longest time.”